Radioactive Decay or Drug Degradation

This Demonstration simulates a random decay/degradation process. It could represent the decay of radioactive nuclei or the degradation of a therapeutic drug in the human body. Individual decays or degradation events are visualized via the thin cyan lines. The red line is the mean of all the events. The blue line is a simple exponential function, characterized by the input decay/degradation rate. The green line is an exponential function, characterized by a maximum-likelihood estimate of the decay/degradation rate, calculated using the measured decay/degradation times. For a large number of events, the red, green, and blue curves coincide.